8/04/2013

The pleasures of restrain

Man in Black 3

Last night I caught on HBO Men in Black 3 and loved it. Pity I didn’t see it on a big screen. There are many strong elements there out of which the performances stand out the most. Everybody hits the same tone of restrained pleasure from acting. Even the evil Boris delivers “You complete me” with the full relish of the knowledge of its cultural origin. The same goes for everybody else - they know what they are doing and are having fun doing it. Thank god it’s controlled and not over the top. I should scrap the last sentence - the actors on the screen are the masters in their game and the director is in top form so the fact that the movie works should not be a surprise. Except that the perfect pitch does not happen in all movies with big names, not to mention the cacophony of false notes in (too) many screen attempts regardless of the class of actors/directors involved.

The playfulness is imbedded in in the story itself. Andy Warhol’s true identity, or an alien confused by too much insight into “the way things are” are delightful concepts.

I am a sucker for stories with aliens and it’s usually difficult to unglue me from a flick with them. Time travel on the other hand (with the exception of “Back to the future”) most of the time (!) leaves me cold. I find boring the mechanical aspects of narratives that have to be employed in such scripts. Yet, MIB 3 manages to surf with ease the dangerous waters of “I have to go back to fix what causes the misfortunes in the now”.

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About me

I am interested in the lofty and in the mundane, in the metaphysical and in the hilarious too. My film work has recently dealt with bridging the fictitious and the documentary as well as with seeking connections between the abstract and the visual.
The projects are described at www.directing.com